Cursed Mountain. We don't talk about Cursed Mountain in my house.
It's not really that bad a game, it's just so fucking frustrating that I was in danger of putting my Wii remote through the TV, so I had to stop playing it about half way through and move on. It's mainly one factor, the healing process. You see, to heal yourself you have to visit a shrine-type-thing and light incense. There's always a shrine there during a particularly difficult fight, but it takes around 6 seconds to do the deed and by that time you've been assaulted by three or four angry spooks and your health is lower than when you started. Couple that with unskippable cutscenes which you have to watch countless times when you inevitably die just after they've played and it's enough to make you want to garrote yourself with the Nunchuck cable.
So Cursed Mountain went the way of Sacred 2, banished to the shelf with it's tail between it's legs, and before the Wii was able to recover from actually being used, I had slammed Sam and Max Season One in the drive and was eagerly awaiting "The Wii's first Sitcom".
Sam and Max is a collection of six bite-size episodic Point-and-Click adventure games featuring two "Freelance Police Officers"; Sam is an anthropomorphic dog in a trilby hat who talks like a 1930s movie detective, and Max is a sociopathic rabbit with a penchant for violence.
The game is absolutely baffling in how random some of your tasks are, I am through but two of the six episodes and have had to consult a guide on more than a few occasions. This is obviously a conscious decision though, as the game is very self-parodying of the genre. When a conveniently needed item is given to you by a completely unrelated NPC, Sam will comment on how convenient that is, etc.
The humour is pretty good too, I applaud any game that uses the word 'bollocks', especially an American one. As far as the genre goes, S&M isn't the best but it's still great and very original. A bit more polish for the Wii conversion would have been great, there are times when the speech skips itself and the framerate drops sporadically but it's nothing game-killing. I think I'll be able to get through it without smashing a controller.
Had a bit of a go with the demo of Dark Void, the latest offering from Capcom this week. Wait, what's that I hear? Is it, yes it is! Nolan North ladies and gentlemen! Well, even I'm starting to get a bit bored of him, and that's saying something. Great voice-actors should be a once every-so-often treat, like Simon Templeman (The voice of Kain, of the Legacy of, for those who don't know). If you hear their voice every time you fire up a console, it kind of dulls the pleasure. Like eating Steak every day. Anyway, Dark Void at least does Nolan North well, giving him a very natural role not too dissimilar to Uncharted's Drake, and for the first few seconds while you're on foot, the game feels decent. Then you employ Dark Void's gimmick, the Jetpack, and it all goes tits up. The controls are all wrong, it's boring, it's silly, no, this won't be getting a purchase this side of 2 for £20. Had a quick go on Assassin's Creed II Discovery on the DS the other day and was pleasantly surprised. Way better and more polished that Altair's Chronicles was. I'll definitely give it a proper go if I can tear myself away from Tetris DS for long enough.
I got Rogue Warrior the other day. Yes, I know, I've seen the reviews, I know it only got an aggregate of 27 on Metacritic, but fuck it. It was £14 in Cash Converters and it's only been out a month and a half. If it's so bad (Manhunt 2 bad) that I have to get rid of it, I should make my money back in Gamestation. For now, it's nestled in my Shame Pile, so time will tell. It's gotta be worth it to hear Mickey Rourke rap.
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